Ken x faith type II industrial belt, half-year update

Here’s the Type II ‘industrial’ belt I bought from Kurt (of faith, Taipei) last year, made by a Taiwanese leather craftsmen called Ken.

Anyway, a overload of pictures here:

^ Yep, it’s close enough to brick-red!

The leather started off a pale, peachy yellow (can refer back to my older posts), and has darkened quite quickly.

I’ve also managed to give the leather a nice pull-up effect using horse oil and beeswax, please see my recent SuFu posting for pics.

^ Indoor lighting – a much darker colour when not in direct sunlight.

^ Fitted with a handsome, made in Taiwan, brass garrison buckle.

^ Copper burr rivet, hand hammered – has aged quite nicely.

^ Thick linen threads that have held up quite well, slightly indigo stained.

^ Character-enhancing scar; the leather is textured, but not heavily corrected.

^ This is very interesting – the original grain of the leather is just popping out in the high abrasion areas.

Makes for an interesting contrast with the printed tree-bark texture.

This leather still has some way to go until the grain development reaches it’s peak.

^ Really liking the tree bark texture – much more horizontal and coarse compared to the natural wrinkling on, say, bull-shoulder or bison.

^ Me.

^ faith. Hard to discern now.

Moving indoors…

^ The burnish is only getting smoother with wear (East Asian dudes tend to burnish good :P).

***

Yep, this is one of the lighter belts in my inventory – in fact, the thinnest.

Although slightly thinner than most of my other belts – measuring 4 to 4.2 mm, 10 oz approx. by caliper – the density on the leather is very high as it has been rolled/compacted during the texturing process.

IIRC, Kurt mentioned it started off with a thickness of 5 mm.

The craftsmanship and choice of threading/hardware is excellent, giving the belt a genuine old-school, rail-road inspired feel that, ironically, you can hardly find in the US any more.

Not to mention the value for money is absolutely fantastic – you can’t even buy a machine stitched, edge-kotted, pseudo-bridle belt from Western retailers with the money I paid for this one.

I hope to contact Ken one day to do some custom work, or perhaps pay him a visit the next time I’m back in Taiwan.

Hi Toru,
Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone in Melbourne does chain-stitch hemming (though I have seen Union Specials being sold from bankrupt garment factories) – I always get mine done at the shop I bought the denim from, or I bring them to Kurt.
You might like to ask the guys at ‘That Store’ to send your jeans to Sydney, there’s at the Chatswood (?) That Store that does chain-stitching.
Cheers,
Mike

Going to Taiwan this summer and really interested in checking out/ buying some leather goods while I’m there. I’ve been following the Taipei denim threat over at superfuture. Do you remember what the prices were like for the stuff you bought in Taiwan (from Ken/Kurt [sorry can’t remember their names]?)?